Tortfeasor
Smash Cadet
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2020
- Messages
- 37
I had the same feeling with Ridley the other night in my Arena. I love using Ridley, but the difference between using a low/mid tier character versus the top tiers is rather stark, notwithstanding how balanced the game is overall. It gets disheartening when your fighting against characters (with a decent player behind them) that just shut down Ridley and have an answer for everything Ridley can do.After a year I'm still fully devoted to Ridley, although I admit that I've been more than tempted to pick Shulk or Samus/Dark Samus up instead. I love everything about Ridley in Smash (except that he's a low/mid tier), but what absolutely kills me is the amount of effort you have to put in every single match - especially when you have people who main Palutena (and other easy characters) show up to tournaments and place well while seemingly putting zero effort into the game. When I'm on my game playing Ridley is the most fun I've ever had with any game in the series, but when I'm not it's a living hell and unfortunately that's really just the nature of the character.
I think I'm getting to a point where the difference in potential between the tiers is a lot more pronounced. I certainly could do a lot better with Ridley, but it just feels like I could grow a lot more with other characters. For example, I like using Mega Man as a secondary and while I can't say I'm better with Mega Man (I'd have to look at my stats with each character), I get the sense there is a lot more potential there. I don't generally find myself being dominated when using Mega Man, like sometimes happens with Ridley. For example, if I'm in a bad matchup as Ridley and I lose, I can lose hard, but with Mega Man, even if I lose it's usually pretty close. Also, with Mega Man I feel like I can answer most options available to other characters, whereas with Ridley it just feels like I don't have any against some characters (especially a decent zoner, both character and player).
Hell, I even messed around with Palutena the other night and even not really knowing the character, it was pretty liberating to have safe moves I could toss out without much thought. I could really see her potential and why she is such as attractive character. Still, I'll stick with Ridley as I have wanted him in Smash since Melee and I could never bring myself to jump on the top tier bandwagon.